The Diablo III Website announces Blizzard's plans to reinstate limits on the number of games a player can launch within a given time period to help curtail exploits and the use of bots. Here's a bit:

The use of bots not only impacts the stability of the game service, but it also has an impact on the player-driven economy. While we regularly take action against accounts for the use of unauthorized third-party programs and bots, this additional measure will help us further preserve and protect the integrity of the game and economy in between ban waves.

Once this change goes live, we're looking for your feedback to help ensure that the limit is working as intended. If you encounter the "Input limit reached" message and feel you should not have, please let us know how many games you were creating and why. This information will help us ensure the limit minimally impacts legitimate players while still protecting the game against bots.

If you can get through our DRM, play our game, it will be fun! The billions of dollars and power we have in our company and personal wealth isn't enough, we want more.

Blizzard could probably afford to give every person who bought Diablo III a free copy of it, and run enough multiplayer servers, and still somehow afford meals on the table for the rest of their lives.

Unfortunate decision to do such DRM, Blizzard (and other game companies).

Pyloff wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 20:31:I have the strong feeling Diablo III was created as a marketplace game. More a proof of concept than an actual game (i.e. semi-rewarding grind).

I believe they created the game to show the power of the market and the depravity of those who obsess. All those semi-news shows about gamer obsession should get a mole in Act-Blz. I'm sure their nipple nuts would spin.

I envision a bunch of steve ballmers in a board room all doing their crazy happy dances whenever they come up with a new money making idea.

I have the strong feeling Diablo III was created as a marketplace game. More a proof of concept than an actual game (i.e. semi-rewarding grind).

I believe they created the game to show the power of the market and the depravity of those who obsess. All those semi-news shows about gamer obsession should get a mole in Act-Blz. I'm sure their nipple nuts would spin.

Flatline wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 16:12:And yeah, you can buy hats in TF2 which are purely cosmetic, but it's not generally understood/accepted that in the next 10 hours or whatever of playtime that you'll end up having to replace that hat because it's become obsolete.

That presupposes the idea that the drops aren't useless to begin with.

As for your SC2 "mission pack" comment in another post, I would hardly call Heart of the Swarm a mission pack. An entirely new single player campaign (which the Terran campaign was pretty well done in my opinion), and new units in multiplayer, which that alone means months and months of balancing work to be done. Keep in mind it also took Valve 2 years to release Episode 1, and it wasn't nearly the same size or scope of Half-Life 2 (as HoTS is to WoL). Blizzard kind of shot themselves in the foot though, it took them longer than Valve to realize that episodic content is a terrible development cycle to commit to.

So... we get... 6 new units say (2 for each faction?), or maybe 9 units total, and a bunch of single player missions.

Yeah, that's a mission pack. And might I humbly remind you that Brood Wars did the *exact* same thing as HOTS and came out almost one year to the day after Starcraft 1? And let's be further honest: Do you really think they started from scratch the day after they shipped SC2? Hardly. I'm sure HOTS started development at the tail end of SC2's development. While it's been 2 years since SC2 launched, I'd put money down that HOTS has been in dev for closer to 3 years.

And let's not kid ourselves, HOTS is *not* going to be balanced by any stretch of the means on launch day. It's going to get patched 10-12 times once it actually hits mainstream and gets beta tested by 10 million people, including professional gamers. Which means that year, year and a half of "balancing" that they're doing? Meaningless. The benefit will be surpassed in the first 90 days of the game's release.

Edit: And Valve has the same damn problem as Blizzard for releasing games "meh... whenever..." Holding up the disastrous cluster-fuck that is Half-life 2 episodes is hardly a vindication for Blizzard. Next you'll be using Duke Nukem Forever as an excuse for Blizzard being slower than shit.

But it'll still be a crap excuse because we have *excellent* benchmarks to hold Blizzard up against: Blizzard's own development history. After all, they're basically remaking the same 3 or 4 games over and over again now. Next up will probably be a minor graphical overhaul of Warcraft, due out in 2025.

wonkawonka wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 11:36:I have no idea what the cheating is about, but it must be really rampant (and bots must be ruling the roost) because prices in the AH are insane for a normal player, and drops rates are epsilon (and drops are crap anyway).I played 75 hours, much of it at level 60, quite a bit of it on inferno, and I have YET TO SEE A DROP BETTER THAN YELLOW.

Needless to say I stopped playing.

It's really like they have the game tuned for bots. (both apps and people...)

Yea..i am confused tho what was the reason to do the : Always online DRM for sp

Flatline wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 14:52:PEOPLE ARE SPENDING HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS ON A VIDEO GAME WEAPON. A FEW LINES OF CODE AND A FUCKING PIECE OF ARTWORK THAT IS STORED ON A SERVER SOMEWHERE.

People spends thousands (even hundreds of thousands) on a rock (diamond), so I don't see why it should surprise you. You'd go nuts worrying about what wealthy people spend their money on.

The thing here tho is the other compagnies will implant that shit into games making it a "must do" to win. Stearing the game toward the "use you real money here" point.The "if you don't like it don't use it" phrase isn't worth anything nothing good comes out of this only more bad games

People spends thousands (even hundreds of thousands) on a rock (diamond), so I don't see why it should surprise you

Diamond is available on this planet in a finite quantity and will generally only ever go up in value. A few lines of code can always be replaced by... a few more lines of code.

And do you really not understand the problem with this? Markets only work when they are reasonably free. "The Diablo III Market" is quite obviously run by and for Blizzard. It's a scam. If you buy into it you've been scammed. If you don't realize this you're retarded.

Charming...and markets work by supply and demand. No demand, no market.

People spends thousands (even hundreds of thousands) on a rock (diamond), so I don't see why it should surprise you

Diamond is available on this planet in a finite quantity and will generally only ever go up in value. A few lines of code can always be replaced by... a few more lines of code.

And do you really not understand the problem with this? Markets only work when they are reasonably free. "The Diablo III Market" is quite obviously run by and for Blizzard. It's a scam. If you buy into it you've been scammed. If you don't realize this you're retarded.

Flatline wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 16:12:And yeah, you can buy hats in TF2 which are purely cosmetic, but it's not generally understood/accepted that in the next 10 hours or whatever of playtime that you'll end up having to replace that hat because it's become obsolete.

That presupposes the idea that the drops aren't useless to begin with.

As for your SC2 "mission pack" comment in another post, I would hardly call Heart of the Swarm a mission pack. An entirely new single player campaign (which the Terran campaign was pretty well done in my opinion), and new units in multiplayer, which that alone means months and months of balancing work to be done. Keep in mind it also took Valve 2 years to release Episode 1, and it wasn't nearly the same size or scope of Half-Life 2 (as HoTS is to WoL). Blizzard kind of shot themselves in the foot though, it took them longer than Valve to realize that episodic content is a terrible development cycle to commit to.

Verno wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 15:23:Unlike some others here I'm not ready to condemn Blizzard for all time because Diablo 3 had an iffy launch or really mediocre design choices. They do have their work cut out for them though, the game has little longevity since they focused so much on cutting down for accessibility and balance.

I'm not predicting doom for Blizzard off of this. I'm predicting hard times for blizzard based on their aggregate performance, both in terms of products being delivered (Starcraft 2 & the 2 year delay for a mission pack, Kung Fu Panda, Diablo 3, hell even SC2 basically being a graphical overhaul of SC1), their corporate culture changing, and the Activision/Blizzard stock tanking.

They've lost their pedigree and are coasting right now on 20 years of good name and an absurd and unrealistic development cycle deadline of "meh whenever...". I get it, it ships when it's done (though as we can see, D3 really wasn't "done"), and that's awesome, but that means you need some hard-assed project managers to create some pressure in the absence of hard ship dates and similar expectations. Otherwise you get shit like 2 years dev time for a mission pack for Starcraft 2.

Blizzard needs some major failures to make them lean and hungry again. Maybe not so lean that they have to dump their "when it's done" policy, but lean enough so that ten years on something like Diablo 3 is a disaster and not something to be proud of.

jacobvandy wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 12:57:Well shit, there's no way this is just to curtail the use of bots. Bots or not, it still takes some time to do any farming run, so this will definitely impact manual farming as well. There's a really neat spot in Act 1 that can net you up to 500k per hour between loads of monster gold and some magic drops, but it involves restarting from a conveniently close-by checkpoint and running over to the little side dungeon/basement that has about a 50% chance to be open. It takes no more than 10-15 seconds if it's not there, and maybe up to 25-30 if it is.

That sounds very... boring. Guess I'm in the minority though considering how popular the game is. It reminds me of doing dailies in WoW and SWTOR. Just this repetitious grind to get another small step forward.

Then again I sat up for hours last night mining in Terraria. Hacking up little mounds of dirt and stone in hopes of finding some new ore or items. I honestly don't know why it's so damn fun but hours just disappear.

I don't sit here and do it all day, hell I've rarely done it for more than an hour straight. Even so, I can just listen to talk radio or watch TV while I do it. But since it's so quick, I usually hop on that char (geared with about 230% extra gold and 200% magic find) and do some farming here and there when I need a little extra for the AH or am just waiting for an auction to end. Once you get the routine down, it requires zero thought or effort but grants some really decent rewards, including the occasional rare or even legendary item (even if it's shit it can be worth a decent amount on the AH).

Wowbagger_TIP wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 15:38:Drops and gold seem to be limited in the game due to farming going on. This is to protect the online economy, but makes the game terribly boring for those that don't want to use the AH/RMAH. Even if they do want to use them, the rampant inflation makes it a ridiculous grind to get enough gold to buy stuff. Seems like players lose either way.

Yep, they GLOBALLY nerfed lootables including corpses and chests, as well as breakables such as vases and barrels, because of people farming them. Now they are worthless to everybody.

eunichron wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 15:17:It's not up to you to decide what is right or wrong for people to spend their money on.

I didn't say it was right or wrong, I said it was fucking stupid. There is a difference.

My point is that people are spending hundreds of dollars, which equals probably a day or two worth of real world labor, on a handful of code and a few KB of artwork.

And yeah, you can buy hats in TF2 which are purely cosmetic, but it's not generally understood/accepted that in the next 10 hours or whatever of playtime that you'll end up having to replace that hat because it's become obsolete. So even there TF2 wins out (though I find myself not caring about TF2 since it went hat & microcharge crazy).

KS wrote on Jul 17, 2012, 14:04:leading to a reduction in its price, and of comparable items.

Except that's not what's happening. The "enterprising people" aren't generating more items, they're generating more gold, which is causing rampant inflation due to the rate at which bots can introduce new capital into the system. Regular, i.e. non-botting, players can't keep up.

Drops and gold seem to be limited in the game due to farming going on. This is to protect the online economy, but makes the game terribly boring for those that don't want to use the AH/RMAH. Even if they do want to use them, the rampant inflation makes it a ridiculous grind to get enough gold to buy stuff. Seems like players lose either way.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell (I think...)